


vintergatan svala

by Magepaw



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Developing Friendships, Empath, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Insecurity, Musical Instruments, Musical References, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28923774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magepaw/pseuds/Magepaw
Summary: She wonders yet again how she could ever weave the melodies of their disparate hearts into an ensemble when the one element they have in common is that they have nothing in common.Yet despite all the others' quirks, Niyon is plainly aware that she is the most difficult to connect with. Solitary to a fault, brooding and melancholy, anxious with a heart of glass. She hears too much of others, and is far too aware they will never hear her in return. She is better equipped to play solo.
Kudos: 7





	vintergatan svala

**Author's Note:**

> i think this is my 100th upload hehe :3c just rambly backstory ideas i wanted to jot down bc i love niyon and ringed her and want more content but oh my god at what cost, side eyes transcendence.......... if it's for you......
> 
> \- set during of seeds of redemption, references things she says about everyone in her uncap episodes except this is a not-recruited-by-MC timeline  
> \- her whole deal is that she says she doesn't like anyone except danchou;;; so i thought it would be nice for her to at least realize she doesn't hate them,, probably,, most of the time,,  
> \- bg silvasong!

It is not often that fate conspires to gather their scattered crew all in one place. Niyon sighs. It's exhausting just to think about, and she hasn't even made it to the meeting place yet.

Alone, Niyon is content with listening to the world around her. Wind in the trees, rustling leaves. The distant barking of dogs in town. The creaking of old cart wheels on the road. The rhythm of her own heartbeat, the metronome she carries safe within the cage of her ribs. A single blade of grass, pressed between the knuckles of two thumbs, becomes a whistle. A nearby bluebird sings, and Niyon answers, whistling her song pitch-perfect.

It all weaves together into a fleeting melody, an evanescent place and time that will never again exist except in her memory. But duty calls. She arranges her chopsticks neatly inside the Miyasato takeout box and replaces the lid, packing it away to finish later. She doesn't much feel like eating. Niyon rises with another reluctant sigh, ballgown sweeping behind her as she glides through the air, still lost within herself.

The others are noisy. All they want to do is fight, even just for their own entertainment. Seofon could stand to learn a thing or two about conducting from Narita. Or from Anre, who could at least carry a steady beat for them to follow without stealing the spotlight. Niyon thinks their eclectic band would fall to so many bickering pieces were it not for Anre's reliable percussion setting the tempo. She wonders yet again how she could ever weave the melodies of their disparate hearts into an ensemble when the one element they have in common is that they have nothing in common.

Yet despite all the others' quirks, Niyon is plainly aware that _she_ is the most difficult to connect with. Solitary to a fault, brooding and melancholy, anxious with a heart of glass. She hears too much of others, and is far too aware they will never hear her in return. She is better equipped to play solo.

She is the koto, after all – hard to learn, traditional but esoteric, an acquired taste. The koto is a zither larger than she is. The plectrums must be custom-sized for her. She must special order her strings through Sierokarte's network of merchants because they are so difficult to find on her own. And for Niyon, it is perfection. Through it she learns there is passion in her after all, but not the fierce fire-burning intensity she hears in the other Eternals; hers is a slower, quieter, but all-consuming windstorm, shutting out the outside world as she falls deeper inside herself.

It has never been an easy task to let others in.

* * *

It is always harder to breathe in the streets of towns, suffocating under the press of bodies and emotions. _Défendu_ helps. Niyon was young, too young, when she learned to craft shields with her power, psychic barriers to protect her from others' burgeoning energy. She knows too much of strangers, unwillingly, resentfully, forced to pretend she doesn't hear everything they hide to spare their dignity. She learned to watch people from a distance, so that she has the power to leave when their tune inevitably sours into something unpleasant.

Stardust Town is... different.

It is, of course, no less unpleasant or stifling than any other gathering place for people. Niyon cannot say she enjoys her time there – the heartache chorus of longing and loneliness, abandonment and despair, which tugs at her in ways she cannot shield herself from, nor can she assuage with the strings of her harp. The scars here cannot be healed in a day. But there are notes of hope there, too, fragile as embers among the ashes, waiting for kindling. She hears the resilience born of hardship, and a bolstering leitmotif of determination to survive that echoes in all of the lost and found.

She hears this loudest in Tien and Feower. Niyon does not dislike the twins, even if Feower does his damnedest to drown out his own sincerity with as much caterwauling as possible. Though she would be loath to admit it, Niyon does not mind helping them if it means earning their company. She has played sing-along concerts for the children in the past, and will do so again if asked.

To her the twins are _a quattro mani:_ a piano four-hands, a duet sharing the same keys. Every demisemiquaver is a blade between her ribs, a bullet between her eyes, unfailingly accurate. And in between every sixteenth, thirty-secondth, sixty-fourth, she hears the perfect trust that the other will always fill the gaps in their melody. They are ruthless, but they are kind when they can afford to be.

Niyon would even play along, idly strumming their darkest secrets into the light, but she imagines Feower at least would have something to say about it. And so Niyon remains a silent observer. They could well be insulted by her perception of their music as one sonata, rather than two individual movements. Sibling identity can be a complicated melody to unravel, inextricably woven together by the painful notes of loss they share between them.

Niyon could never understand that kind of bond. She wonders what such a duet would have meant to her when she was small, to never be alone. Perhaps she could have grown up brave like them. She supposes she likes to simply listen to the two of them together now, even when they are saying nothing at all. They have no room for a third player on their bench.

* * *

The nights here are long, the vast empty sky stretching above as rich and black as winter rosin. The tension strung in the town awaiting its fate swells into a sonorous nocturne around them. Niyon sings the lullabies that the mothers in the village would have sang for their children had they not been lost, and watches the beasts from the forest lay at her feet in harmless slumber. She sings the same lullaby for Threo, little more than a beast herself, and watches the wild child curl up in the dirt, blessedly silent for once.

Threo's melody, clamoring and warlike, a din born of crashing cymbals and primeval horns, frightens Niyon more than any monster, but in the end, she is also an ally. The sick ones need rest, Mugen needs peace, and Threo's incessant noise will only keep them all awake longer.

When she is ready to take her post, Tweyen hovers waiting for her. Niyon and Tweyen are the sentries in the darkness, the famed eyes and ears of the Eternals. Between the two of them, there is little that can escape their notice. They do not speak when they are on duty, but she supposes it is a comfort just to know Tweyen the farsight archer is in the skies above her. She does not often work with a partner that is not an instrument.

As she closes her eyes and soaks in the muted sounds of the slumbering town, Niyon's mind wanders back to simpler times. Before the prestige of the Eternals and the Sky Philharmonic, before her name was spoken in hushed tones across the skies, Niyon simply performed for taverns and festivals, earning just enough for her lodgings as she drifted from island to island.

She began to collect instruments of all sorts when she was young, souvenirs of sounds and places that she still carries with her in the pocket dimensions of her spellwork. A simple lyre, carved wood from the ancient forests of Lumacie, seven strings made of soft monster gut, small enough for Harvin hands. A mandolin crafted in the Valtz Duchy, four strings doubled for a count of eight, forged of Valtz steel. The Riverfolk festivals in the smaller islands off the coasts of Auguste are where she is first drawn to the thirteen strings of the koto. Her fingers learned calluses from playing day and night, committing their sounds to her heart.

Other minstrels were unnerved by how quickly she learned, a mere child on her own, and their silent jealousy festered into resentment that stings her even in memory. She thinks perhaps this is the strain of melody she likes in Tweyen's heart. It is not acceptance, but a shared rejection by the world around them. But oh, Tweyen carries her rejections with far more grace than Niyon could ever aspire to. Niyon shrinks away in fear, _diminuendo_ , where Tweyen always rises in _crescendo_ to her challenges.

As her music grew and she grew with it, Niyon learned to tune herself to others, playing the songs she heard emanating from their cores. Carols of hope, anthems of fortitude, threnodies of mourning. The emotions she is attuned to are amplified, for better or for worse. Niyon learned her music had the power to hurt.

This frightened her in a way that no horror of this world could come close to. There were always skyfarers eager to offer her a place in their crew, to use that power to break the wills of beasts and men alike, but Niyon always declined. She never desired camaraderie, and certainly did not want to hurt others. How simple her life had been when she adhered to those rules.

Niyon opens her eyes in time to see the flash of Tweyen's spectral arrow, speeding off into the dark like a shooting star to some faraway target. A stray monster foolishly drew the huntress's attention, and paid dearly for its mistake.

Tweyen's arcane bow sings in the timbre of a violin, an accomplished soloist who longs for the harmony of a duet. And one day she finds it in Silva, in that brilliant duel between masters, in the rhapsody of strings they compose together and choreograph across the skies. Niyon heard the change in her and quietly understands, even if she never brings it up, even if she cannot ever truly relate. Perhaps that was all camaraderie meant, learning someone's melody well enough to admire it from afar, watch it change and grow, _con amore_ , even if her own remained untouched.

For one such as Niyon, creating bonds is... difficult. Sisyphean, even. Perhaps it was progress enough to realize Niyon considered Tweyen a friend at all.

* * *

She does not dislike children, but Niyon has never been very tolerant of the sounds that children make. It is not their fault any more than it is her fault for being sensitive. It is an incompatibility of nature. The vocal folds of all children are short, and Harvin the shortest of all; such shrill, piercing tones hurt her keen ears. Fif swoops and darts through the air with her staff, little body overflowing with light and life, and Niyon closes her eyes just to try and hold her wavering concentration.

The heart flutters nervously, a metronome keeping time, _prestissimo_. Twelve pairs of ribs, cartilage bowing with each bated breath. Two lungs expand as the diaphragm contracts. Small cords strung delicate in the throat await the next breath to strum them into sound. The body is a frail instrument, so easily ruined. Fif is worlds braver than her, facing death with a smile.

As the howling Magasin hordes descend on them to make their last stand, the youth of Stardust Town shriek and flee to the assembly hall. Explosions and discordant notes of terror drive into Niyon's skull like shrapnel. Combat has never been Niyon's forte. But still – Niyon will fight for the sake of protecting the powerless, even if the ugly dissonance of the battlefield makes her head ring with the tumult of a hundred bells crashing into each other.

At least this fight is not hers alone. A _decet_ is a composition which requires ten musicians to complete.

Niyon hangs back from the front line as the Eternals take the stage, _risoluto_ , a sea of white between her and the darkness engulfing them. Of course it is Seofon, irrepressible Seofon, who insists time and again they can accomplish more together than any one of them apart. His smile, brassy and bold, radiates some notes of smug triumph that convinces Niyon this trouble might not have befallen the town had it not been for Seofon's involvement in the first place. She has never met a man that reminded her more of a trumpet.

She weaves the opening chords of Nebulosa Fröjd, spinning her own pocket of sound to drown out the screams. Her plectrum shields shimmer into readiness, and she reluctantly opens her eyes to keep watch over Fif, her fellow sorceress. Fif is a woodwind, a flute – no, a piccolo, the highest and brightest notes to balance out their lows. Niyon held onto little from when she had been that small, only scattered notes, here one moment, gone the next.

She spares a moment to wonder what kind of person Fif would grow into after all this, then casts it aside. It only matters that she is given the chance to grow at all.

Then Eahta storms the battlefield beside his little one with his katanas flashing, and together their war song becomes a triumphant paean of joy. Niyon shrinks back at his deafening war cry, _fortississimo_. Eahta's timbre is the low, rumbling string bass beneath their orchestra, cut with bold tones of the euphonium, the tuba, everything that is large and powerful and supportive, bolstering Fif's woodwinds in every way he can. He roars as he sweeps through scores of enemies like they were nothing more than sheets of paper.

Niyon's fragile melody is overwhelmed by it. Her hands tremble as she averts her gaze, but she continues playing.

She wants to leave this horrible melody behind her, but it too will remain etched in her memory. She has seen too much death since donning this white mantle, but if even one innocent can be spared, then all her suffering has been worth it. Niyon will always be a coward, but she cares too much not to keep trying.

* * *

The wind between the branches of trees sing the softest whispers, sweet siren promises of solitude that call her away from the suffering of the world. Niyon has always loved being outdoors when she can be still, melting into the wilderness, letting her thoughts fade into quietude, ceasing to exist. When she was young, adults warned Niyon of the dangers of going off alone, of what happened to any child that strayed too close to the forest. She had been pleaded with, scolded, punished, and eventually, ignored. But despite her timid disposition, Niyon did not fear the monsters. She feared people far more.

She did not know how to vocalize the way the hearts of others rebuffed her – it is more than simply the noise of words spoken aloud in a crowd; it is a cacophony of emotions and sensations that drowns her. She is overwhelmed by the tumult, the ferocity of anger; the dissonance of saying one thing and feeling another. She learned instead to avoid people in order to protect herself from their chaos, retreating into silence to find her own voice again.

The forest brought her peace. Monsters were simple creatures to be pitied, no longer true flora or fauna, driven mad with a twisted nature they cannot hope to overcome on their own. Those bold enough to creep from the trees, sharp of claw and eager to taste a soft child's flesh, Niyon sang to. They were lulled to sleep, all the fight bled out of them by the soothing tone of her voice. One day Niyon walked into those woods and never returned, the beginning of a long journey that eventually led her here.

She thinks, out of all of them, it is probably Seox that understands this life of isolation best. It is hard to listen to his melody for long without a queasy weight settling in the pit of her stomach – his is the rich tones of a bassoon, dark and sonorous, creeping in the shadows of the light he aches for, but turning away in shame before he is seen for the pitiable creature he is underneath. She can sense, rather than hear, that Seox still has further to go on his own, even though the threat to Stardust Town has been vanquished, and Niyon's role is coming to a close. She worries about him, in her own guarded way, though she does not have the words to tell him so. 

Niyon thinks if she could hear her own melody, her shields in place of his mask, their anxieties thrumming in terrible parallel, it might be echoes of a similar tune. But his chorus of despair has been twisted and broken in ways she never was, her power never abused so far as to claim the lives of the town she left behind. And it would have been so, so easy for the composition of her life to be written in that direction, that it frightens her. She would not have survived the things Seox endured. Her glass heart would have shattered long ago.

Still, even in Seox's somber resonance, she begins to hear the faintest drop of hope at the bottom of that deep, dark well. Even his melody is capable of growing through the catalyst of others. And he is the one to tell her, not the other way around, that she should treasure the few who accept her. She would point out that the others merely tolerate her presence without understanding her morose nature, but... Niyon has not forgotten the honesty of his melody in that moment.

Perhaps this is the feeling that pulls her from the quiet thicket of trees where she needed to regroup, and back into the hubbub caused by carts and crowds and timber and shovels. Niyon is reminded of the disaster that befell Perfetto Island, the lamentations of the mourners who lost everything they had built, of Elta and Caro and voices raised in song, and finds some solace in knowing she helped to prevent the worst from coming to pass here. They still had their lives to live. The buildings would be rebuilt, the supplies reacquired. These children may yet have a future waiting for them.

Rebuilding the wreckage of Stardust Town does remind Niyon she is not as isolated now as she was then. They work in an ensemble to clear the rubble from the streets and to lift the battered spirits of the survivors, something she could not have accomplished solo. It is not often that fate gathered all ten of them together, and Niyon could do without the tumultuous bickering and the chaos, and would be just fine if she never set foot on a battlefield again, but this, this work held meaning to her. This was why she donned the mantle of the Eternals. Watching their backs, it is clear to Niyon that the rest of her crew resonates on the same frequency.

They could not be more different from her, the black sheep, the musician among warriors, but all of them are doing everything they can to help life resume again after tragedy. She is almost a little fond of them, in that moment, though she would never say as much out loud. She muses if perhaps, in some small way, they have changed her melody after all.


End file.
